The Sunday Times campaign to clean up car hire gathers momentum today with the involvement of the Institute of Customer Service director, Paul Cooper, who describes the service of car hire companies as "unacceptable" has has issued a plea to car hire companies:

"I applaud your campaign. What most car hire firms don't understand is that all customers want is to get from A to B: the vehicle is irrelevant. It is their responsibility to provide a product which is fit for purpose to allow us to do this, to cover it for all insurance liabilities and to ensure that it doesn't let us down. We should not be expected to pay for any kind of damage, especially punctures, windscreen chips, stone damage and the like. If we want to take on the potential liability of comprehensive rather than third party, then maybe that's acceptable as an option, but this too is debatable. My message to car rental companies is: all agree to insure your cars and pass this on in your pricing. Don't treat the customers as idiots - we all have cars, we know the score. Sure the bill will go up a little at the front end but consumers won't all leave you feeling ripped off, which is what we do now" - Paul Cooper, director, Institute of Customer Service

Mr Cooper joins the readers, who now number close to 100, who have bombarded us with complaints of being ill-treated by rental companies. Judging by our bulging postbag, you are as maddened as we are by extortionate excess payments, mysterious add-on charges and indecipherable small print. Here’s a selection of your e-mails from last week:

After a week in the Algarve, I returned to Faro airport with a hire car that appeared to be in perfect condition. The Avis clerk inspected the car while I waited in the office. She returned to say the windscreen was damaged. We went to inspect the car and she pointed to the top of the windscreen on the driver’s side.

I couldn’t see any damage, so she wiped the area with a tissue, but still there was nothing visible. Finally, she unlocked the car and from the inside showed me a tiny hairline crack. I had driven the car for a week and had not seen this, yet she had found it within a few minutes from the outside. I was immediately suspicious.

I was charged £200 for the “repair”. This was waived in the end, because the company messed up the paperwork, but I wonder how many other drivers have paid for the same piece of damage. Martin Scrace, Devon

Avis says: “We have recently introduced handheld check-in devices at 125 locations in Europe that allow customers to review and approve their final bill before leaving the rental station. We can’t comment on this case, but all our rental agents are trained to identify vehicle damage, and which types of damage are and are not recharged to customers.”

We hired a car last August at Alicante airport. We were invited to take out extra cover — £30 for two weeks — which we believed would cover everything. When we returned the car, the company found a small dent in the roof and charged us £133. We hadn’t realised it was there until they pointed it out. The company later said that its damage excess waiver did not cover the roof, wheels, tyres, underside or windows! Bill O’Regan, London

I was charged an additional 11% by Budget at Geneva airport for winter tyres. This extra charge was not quoted in the online price, and I feel it is misleading. Just to rub salt in the wound, it was 23C at Geneva when I picked up the car. David Kilborn, Shillington

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